Ben Affleck: In hindsight, it was inappropriate for me to grope an MTV host; Update: Another accusation

What are you supposed to do if you’re in the position Hilarie Burton found herself in, on the receiving end of a casual boob-squeeze by a Hollywood A-lister? If you say nothing and laugh it off only to complain later, as she did, you’ll be asked why you didn’t complain sooner if it bothers you so much. If you complain right away, you’ll be asked why you didn’t laugh it off, as he’s only being “playful.” Where’s the sweet spot in being mad at the right time but not so mad as to be accused of overreacting?

What Affleck’s guilty of here is light years short of the evil his pal Harvey Weinstein’s been accused of but there’s a glimmer of the same sense of entitlement. Weinstein thought he could get away with grabbing women. So did Affleck. She’s a VJ and he’s a star; what’s she gonna do? The reason this has come back onto the public radar is because Affleck suddenly has an enormous “Harvey problem,” not just because he worked with Weinstein but because Rose McGowan explicitly accused him on Twitter yesterday of having promised to stop Weinstein after she was allegedly assaulted by him. If McGowan’s telling the truth, Affleck’s known for many years what Weinstein was capable of. But he didn’t stop it, and he didn’t say jack. So naturally his own behavior’s under the microscope now too:

This is bigger than left versus right but one does wonder how it would have played if Affleck had been a right-wing rara avis in Hollywood and pulled this on Burton instead of a liberal bien-pensant. The incident’s on camera; Burton has discussed it before. Not until now, when Hollywood is melting down from the heat generated by Weinstein, did anyone pay much attention. Hard to believe it wouldn’t have been seen as evidence of a problematic Larger Truth about the right’s “culture of misogyny” if his politics were different. As it is, it’s evidence of a Larger Truth about Hollywood’s culture of misogyny, which Weinstein’s orbit of enablers proves is much worse than anyone had suspected. How much of an enabler was Ben Affleck? Maybe McGowan, and others, will have more to say. Worth remembering, though: He may not even be the most “problematic” member of his own A-list family.

Two clips for you, one of Affleck and Burton and the other of a very mild joke Seth MacFarlane made at the 2013 Oscar nominations ceremony about Weinstein. He’s under fire too, as the joke looks like smoking-gun proof of just how open Big Harv’s “open secret” was. MacFarlane responded today with … this:

Watch the clip. This is what he considers a “hard swing”? The joke as delivered is as much a dig at the actresses, suggesting they’d be willing to screw Weinstein for a part, as it is at Weinstein himself. This guy had information about Weinstein’s predation for years, apparently. And this was the best he could do to stop it.